After writing the post "What it's like to be a witch in the 21st century", hereI realised that it would actually make for some great chapters, to say the least
DISCLAIMER: I'm not generalising or saying what other witches/esotericists experience with their faiths. I ALWAYS refer ONLY to my beliefs and experiences.
Even if I stop to think for a few minutes or more, I can't remember exactly how I decided that I needed a more concrete and forward-looking spirituality - and I usually remember everything.
Growing up, I always knew that I had some kind of spiritual affinity, considering that I've seen spirits here and there throughout my life - but my mum had never told me anything that confirmed this until I, in 2014, remembered something that happened when I was three years old. She then told me that I'd had other experiences, even if I didn't remember them, and I understood that as my reality.
I had never decided to call myself a medium; the stereotypes are so grotesque and society is so hypocritical that it judges anyone who can see the spiritual world that any religion preaches exists. In November 2022, I decided to start exploring my mediumship.
I believe that in December 2022 or January 2023, I spoke to my mother and considered following Candomblé or Umbanda when I considered my black, gypsy and indigenous ancestry: it's not because I haven't felt the pain of my ancestors who were unfortunately raped for their blood that I won't honour them. I was afraid of being accused of cultural appropriation when I started looking for this ancestry, and I began to think about which other religions would fit in with my deep-rooted spiritual precepts - ever since I can remember, I have firmly believed that the Earth has its own life and consciousness, and that it balances itself, because everything is like that, negative and positive energy, masculine and feminine energy, for example. When I mentioned these concepts to my psychologist, she suggested I look into Wicca.
I didn't really know anything about Wiccans, I just knew that the followers of this precept called themselves witches. I began to identify strongly with the reverence for the elements, but some part of me was still missing - I never went in for spiritualisation because I don't like limiting dogmas. I'm like any Sagittarius - a good adventure always cheers me up, especially if I follow my spontaneity and am not afraid to be original, or strange, I've been called both.
After a few months of trying to fit in with the Wicca tenets of various traditions, I still felt unsatisfied. So I began to create my own journey, choosing topics of study related to any and all spiritual/esoteric fields in which I expressed an interest. When I discovered the existence of a witches' circle next to my psychologist's office, I was afraid - while I missed being able to express the traditions and share the rituals with others of the same faith, I knew that the great fusion of different cultures and spiritualities that I had brought together and created as my own path under the torches of Hecate would not be accepted by many people.
I took out more and more oracles, trying to understand if the Goddess was satisfied with my great concoction, and everything led me to realise that she was. Recognising this, I was suddenly able to meditate and my spells worked more and more, because now I was being myself, my mind laid bare before the Great Mother.
If you think that being a witch could be the path for you, I want you to think about what your journey will be like, without lists of compulsory knowledge drawn up by others or limitations imposed on the spiritual world by those who don't experience it the way you do. Am I a witch? Yes. All women are witches - the first witches date back to kitchen witchcraft, making stews and nourishing their families with food lovingly prepared in a cauldron by the fire. Everyone has a bit of doctor and madman... we could also say that everyone has a bit of doctor and witch.
How me It was my decision to become a witch. I started out at home, alone, without even my mother's help or any participation in my rituals or my faith. She has always given me the freedom to follow whatever spirituality I wanted ever since I learnt that I have a mediumistic predisposition, but I never felt the need to explore this path until 2022, and walking through ancient pagan beliefs was what I chose for myself, whose rituals I performed alone but not without my mother's financial, emotional and spiritual support - when I questioned my faith and thought I was doing everything contrary to how religions are normally followed. It's not traditional at all, and I've read in several places that it would even be wrong. But, as I see it, why would the Goddess refuse devotion from a witch seeking a path to better living and better honouring pagan ancestors just because she wasn't coming down the pre-established path? Pre-established by whom, exactly?
Through this question, we arrive at the same question about God. Does God exist? But it's logical. With many faces, in many pantheons. Zeus, God, Olodumarê, Osiris, Odin and so on. God exists, but what doesn't exist are the limitations imposed by the Catholic Church and other Christian denominations that claim to know how God thinks, acts, what He considers right, wrong, etc. Once this is understood, we move on to the realisation that God is different for each person; he expresses himself in different ways; he acts in different ways, more visibly for some and less clearly for others. Everyone has their own truth above that imposed by religious leaders.
I guarantee that the God and Goddess will not expel you or punish you for following their own precepts and rites, because your faith is true and just as important to the deities and entities as the combined faith of any organisation or collective rite. The collective unconscious is one, and you have access to the energies of that egregore in the same way that someone living the commandments to the letter does.
I call myself a witch because I am, because it's what defines me as a spiritual person and as a person who is faithfully devoted to paganism and especially to the Triple Goddess - a devotion that I now know has lasted throughout all my past lives, especially the last Celtic one. One of the Wiccan principles that I incorporated into my practice was the Wiccan version of the Hippocratic Oath that doctors chant at their graduation: I swore never to harm anyone on my own initiative, nor to help in any spiritual ritual that involved harming a loved one, whether on this physical plane or not, and I have done so. If someone attacks me, I don't take revenge; I don't attack back. I know that the Goddess protects me and that such an attack will be retaliated with Her strength and power as She sees fit and as She wills.
I follow the Wheel of the Year as a definition of the sacred dates - I buy the Wicca Almanac from Editora Pensamento - by reading the entry for the present date on the Yearbook of the Great Mother, written by Mirella Faur, published by Alfabeto. O Yearbook sets out all the pagan deities revered each day, and also suggests rituals for devotions to these deities, which I incorporate into my daily prayers.
The Almanac is more succinct and focused on the reverence of the Goddess and the God regardless of their faces, incorporating all of them in their titles of Goddess and God, without specific names; it also indicates the phase of the moon, the day of the week, the time when the moon's position goes out of course and when it returns, the colours of the candles for daily prayer and the definition of incense for your moment of devotion.
Drawing a magic circle through the elements and invoking an Earth Goddess, an Air Goddess, a Fire Goddess and a Water Goddess for each element, each at their appropriate cardinal point (Earth to the north, Air to the east, Fire to the south, Water to the west, although the shamanic traditions have differentiations) is something I learnt to do while studying Wicca, However, today I know from my spiritual master who follows a path as original as mine, mainly through Umbanda in her work with the Gypsies, that the way I draw the circle is something she's been doing for forty years, and not something exclusive to Wiccanism. So even the most basic thing, like a circle of protection, crosses many beliefs - and you can throw everything into a blender and decide what you're going to strain out to determine your spiritual/religious essence.
The faith of each one of us begins within us and can find similarities in the beliefs of others, perhaps as participation in a collective cult such as Catholicism, Judaism, Islam, Evangelism, Umbanda, Candomblé and thousands of other devotions around the world; However, you may not find a mirror in anything you find when you desperately search for spiritual foundations that can help you distribute and better bear the weight on your shoulders caused by the experiences of past lives, this life and everything that must be worked on spiritually through the profession of your faith when you begin to follow the signs seen in the stained glass windows of your sacred space. Stained glass windows are found in temples, but they are also found in ourselves - we can all choose to see the world through coloured glass, showing us the world as it is perceived through each colour.
Considering that each colour of a stained glass window is a different religion and form of devotion, everyone sees the same thing, but each with their own point of view and experience - no one has the power or should be able to break your inner stained glass window. If you do, know that there's no breaking that coloured crystal that guides your faith to your spirituality.
It will always be there for you, although sometimes the light is dim and distant; with light and spiritual enlightenment as your goal, no matter how long it takes, you will reach it, and bear in mind that you may be the first and only one to forge your own paths, and that doesn't make them any less correct or any more right than the others already forged before your quest for self-knowledge and for reasons greater than those explained by scientific rationality, without any spiritual intervention.
I hope that my stories and experiences can help you to understand your faith and to accept its originality and belief as it is, without measuring it by rulers already pre-established by other dogmas, if that's what you want.
In the name of the elements of Earth, Air, Fire and Water, of Lady Artemis, Lady of the Moon; Lady Athena, Lady of Wisdom and Strategy; Lady Persephone, Lady of Spring and Flowers, Queen of the Underworld; Lady Yemanja, Lady of the Oceans; in the name of these, I close the circle I opened around myself to write this text.
So be it, and so it shall be.
Blessed be.
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